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David Ignatius

A defector’s account of Syrian chemical weapons on the move

Reports from inside two Syrian chemical weapons facilities offer chilling new evidence that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime developed special vehicles last year for moving and mixing the weapons — and an unconfirmed allegation that Lebanese allies of the regime, presumably in Hezbollah, may have been trained 11 months ago in the weapons’ use. …

According to the defector’s account, two senior Syrian officers moved about 100 kilograms of chemical weapons materials from a secret military base in January. The base was in a village called Nasiriyah, about 50 to 60 kilometers northeast of Damascus.

The officers placed the chemicals in a civilian vehicle and were seen driving across a bridge in the direction of the highway toward Lebanon, the Syrian source said. Two days later, he continued, two men with Lebanese accents arrived at the Nasiriyah base and were given training in how to combine and activate the chemicals, as well as the proper safety precautions in handling them.

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